So, the biggest acquisition in Microsoft's history. The Wall Street Journal reports - and it has been confirmed - that Microsoft and Skype will announce today that Redmond will buy Skype for $8.5 billion. That's a lot of money for a company that hasn't ever actually made any profits. Update:and it's official: yay on Skype on the Xbox360 and Windows Phone, and this: "Microsoft will continue to invest in and support Skype clients on non-Microsoft platforms." Let's hope this includes Linux.

1/GTalk is based on open standards like Jabber/XMPP which anyone can easily implement, and there have been implementations of it in Pidgin/Empathy.
2/There's a version of Google Talk for Linux, in the form of a browser plugin which runs inside of GMail.